Bill seeking separate identity for transgenders introduced

NEW DELHI: A bill seeking to empower the transgender community by providing them a separate identity and putting in place a mechanism to punish those who exploit

NEW DELHI: A bill seeking to empower the transgender community by providing them a separate identity and putting in place a mechanism to punish those who exploit them has been introduced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

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The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016 will pave the way for the community to be declared as the third gender with an option to identify themselves as male, female or transgender.

Among other provisions, forcing a transgender to bonded labour or inciting them to beg, dispossessing them from their land or forcing them to leave their home and village and removing their clothes will be treated as offence punishable with up to two years in jail and a fine.

However, the bill does not explicitly talk about giving reservation to such transgender persons who by birth do not belong to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes. “A committee will be formed to decide on whether such transgender persons should be declared as member of the backward class and entitled to reservation like the OBC (Other Backward Class),” said a ministry official.

Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP)’s NK Premchandran opposed the introduction of the bill by social justice minister Thaawarchand Gehlot on the ground that a similar private member’s bill passed by the Rajya Sabha is pending in the Lok Sabha.

However, speaker Sumitra Mahajan ruled that while the two bills may have similar provisions, the one introduced by the government is different.